The Positive Side of the Older Populations To Come

The Positive Side of the Older
Populations To Come

The huge change in the age
structure that would come with a slowing or halting of population growth need
not result in older people becoming an economically crippling burden. In fact,
the kinds of policies that could stimulate this change are the same ones that
would produce a more ecologically viable and vital society as a whole.

Birth and death rates in countries
of largely European origin, as well as in Japan, are now at their lowest levels
in history. If this situation continues, these countries will inevitably have
much older populations and will experience declines in total numbers. That
prospect has generated a host of fears: of labor shortages and wage inflation,
unsustainable calls on the public purse, weakened national defenses, shortages
of intellect, declines in national "vigor," even race suicide and the
disappearance of European culture.

The greatest of these fears relate
to the anticipated additional financial costs-for pensions, health care, and
custodial services-associated with older age structures, and whether there will
be enough younger people earning the money and paying the taxes to defray them.
But, while providing comprehensive health and pension programs appropriate to
older age structures could be expected to require some readjustment in both
perspective and social policy (regarding health care or taxation, for
instance), in none of these countries are the financial barriers to such
provision impossibly high. Whether this provision is actually forthcoming is
another matter, but it is a matter not of money but of social priorities.

Is an aging population something we
realistically need to be concerned about? Well, yes, it is-but not as much as
most people seem to think, and not for the reasons commonly cited.

Let's begin with two pertinent
truths: first, no population can increase indefinitely. There are limits: to
resources, to physical space, to what might be termed "social space." Though
these limits can be extended by changing the way we behave and use our
environment, there will come a point, even with the most judicious behavior and
use of the environment, beyond which population increases will inevitably
result in declines in the quality of life, and ultimately in life itself.

Second, the changing age structures
and imminent numerical declines we are now seeing in some countries stem from
two great human achievements: the ability to control
one's childbearing to the point where the goal of "every child a wanted child"
is now a tangible possibility, and the
ability to postpone death to the point where the great majority in these
countries now die at what not so long ago was considered a highly advanced age.

Thus, older age structures and
imminent numerical declines are to be welcomed, not deplored. They indicate
that we now have the ability to adjust human numbers to the realities of
limited resources in a rational and humane manner, no longer having it cruelly
forced upon us by way of higher death rates.

What Are Those Europeans Really
Worried About?

But it is not just the existence of
limits that argues for welcoming these demographic changes; it is also the
alternatives-for these are all either manifestly undesirable, irrelevant, or
ineffective. If those who are concerned about these changes simply wanted a
younger age structure or a cessation of declining growth rates, the
specifically demographic means to reaching this goal would be to allow
mortality to increase among the elderly; and fertility and immigration to
increase among the young. None of these is realistic.

For ethical reasons, any shortening
the lives of older people by increasing the availability of suicide and
euthanasia would have to apply only to the most helpless and those suffering
extreme and permanent pain-and these, fortunately, are but a very small
proportion of the total, even among the very old. The effect on age structure
of allowing increases in mortality at the older ages would be no more than
minimal.

Fertility is another matter.
Declines in fertility account for most of the trend to older age structures in
these countries, and it is through increases in fertility that this trend is
most likely to be halted or reversed. Ultimately, of course, if these
populations are to avoid completely disappearing (in a purely biological
sense), their fertility rates will have to return to replacement levels. But
that is a long way off. The main concern at present is with achieving a younger
age structure, and policies specifically intended to increase fertility offer
little to go on. Coercing women to bear children they do not want by denying them access to
contraception and abortion is not only objectionable on both moral and health
grounds but also unlikely to meet with any enduring success among people who
have already brought fertility under extensive control. On the other hand,
non-coercive efforts to increase the number of children people do want (or, at least, are willing to bear) have, so far,
been notably unsuccessful. Raising the birth rates in particular countries
could often be self-defeating, not only because it would increase the total
numbers of people on the planet, but because these additional children would
eventually become old themselves.

What, then, of immigration? Apart
from the numerous social, economic, emotional, and political problems
associated with immigration is the demographic fact that immigrants, too, grow
old.

In short, the specifically
demographic approaches to the problems presumably associated with older age
structures and imminent numerical declines won't work. If we are to enjoy the
benefits of low mortality, we must accept the fact that age structures will be
older than ever before, and that fertility will have to remain at no more than
replacement levels. The prudent course, then, is to set about doing what is
required both to adjust to these conditions and to realize the benefits
inherent in them.

Adapting to-and Benefiting From-an
Older, Smaller Population

What would this prudent course
entail? Let's recognize, first, that the needs of older people are not all that
different from those of the rest of the population. Ultimately, having an older
age structure will require that we find ways to enable older people to look
after themselves more effectively, to enable them to live lives of dignity and
reasonable comfort as actively participating and respected members of society.
We can begin to approach these long-term goals by focusing on six intermediate
goals, all of which are to some extent interrelated:

Lower
car usage. Reducing dependence on motor vehicles is important not only
because of the great damage cars do to health and the environment, but also
because, among other things, extensive car usage requires such vast public
expenditure that it limits what is available for more socially useful purposes
and encourages excessively low-density urban layouts-layouts that add greatly
to the costs of establishing and maintaining urban services and, by militating
against the provision of either convenient public transportation or shops and
other facilities within walking distance, make it especially difficult for
older people to remain active participants in the community and to take major
responsibility for their own care.

A high rate of car usage, because
it reduces the extent of one's contact with the physical, social, and human
environment, also militates against the development of various individual
coping skills and traits, like self-confidence, self-discipline, and the
ability (limited when one is insulated from them in the cocoon of a car) to
encounter without fear or anxiety such elements of the social setting as
novelty, strangers, human variety, and dissimilar life styles.

More
livable cities. This is closely related to reducing car usage. As a British
visitor to the U.S. Midwest once wrote:

Detroit is synonymous with two
things: cars and violent death.... But the city does not just make cars; it has
also been made by the car. The city core is dominated by an indoor shopping
mall which you can reach only by automobile. The "Renaissance Centre" is
surrounded by a network of access streets which funnel cars directly into
cavernous underground parking lots. Outside, the old commercial streets are
largely deserted and the buildings derelict.... Says local resident Ralph
Slovenko: "Everything has been removed from the streets except cars and
hoodlums. The more people you take off the streets, the more people become
sitting ducks for crime." [W. Ellwood, "Car Chaos," New Internationalist No. 195, 1989]

When it comes to the layout and
functioning of towns and cities, the particular needs of the elderly include:

public
transportation that is readily available, affordable, safe, and clean;

a high
degree of freedom from the physical, visual, aural, and neurological intrusion
of trucks and cars;

medium-density
(but not high-rise) urban layouts, to permit greater environmental (and
economic) efficiency in the provision of services, and greater ease of mobility
and contact with others;

shops and
eating places that are to human scale and readily accessible;

neighborhood
diversity in available housing types and living arrangements; and

less
geographic and functional specialization by stage-of-life and economic
activity. Older people need frequent, informal contact with others if they are
to remain participant members of society. And children and young people, in
turn, need to have contact with old people-so they will learn not to fear them;
and so they will learn something of the needs and thoughts of old people, and
of what to expect when their own parents, and later they themselves, reach that
stage of life.

Social
services specifically geared to the needs of older or infirm persons. These
range from home assistance with certain elements of personal care to shopping
and delivery services, and respite services to provide occasional relief for
care-givers.

Certain
facilities that would directly benefit not only the aged and infirm but other
sectors of the society, such as:

walk-in
health and counseling services

inexpensive
recreational facilities

libraries

clean,
safe public spaces

clean
public toilets

public
activities (such as open-air band concerts and free night-time athletic events).

And a word could be put in, too,
for the value of having that great English contribution to civilization: a
well-run neighborhood pub.

These would give people some
exercise, get them into public areas, mix together different sectors of the
population, and introduce some variety and interest into people's lives. They
could also strengthen initiative and independence, and foster a sense of
community. They could enrich the lives of older people and put them in better
frames of mind for coping with life's exigencies, and reduce the likelihood of
their becoming entrapped in a low-expectations model emphasizing age-based
deterioration and loss of function.

Less
use of age as a criterion for participation in society. There is
much that younger people can learn from the skills and experience of their
elders-perhaps especially with respect to interpersonal relations, adjustment
to role change (as, for example, with retirement and widowhood), loss of
physical and mental capacity, redundancy, and bereavement. And, of course,
older people have much to learn (and not only about computers!) from those who
are younger.

More
equal distribution of wealth and income. With their superior strength in
the marketplace, rich people are better able to direct society's energies and
its allocation of resources into channels from which they, the rich, can most
benefit. There is nothing necessarily either intentional or malicious about
this. But it takes a lot of poor people to consume as much as the rich-what
with their vacation homes, their second cars, their greater amounts of travel,
and their higher rates of consumption overall.

Assisted by mass advertising, the
rich also set the pattern for much of the consumption of the rest of the
society. The result is higher resource consumption levels (and the waste this
gives rise to), often undesirably high levels of consumer indebtedness, and a
greater emphasis on instant or short-term gratification as against saving, the
husbanding of resources, and planning for the future.

This pattern of consumption
grounded in marked inequality of income and wealth also nurtures privatism: the
idea that to enjoy something-a beach or lakefront, a piece of equipment, the
open countryside-one must own it. This
limits development of those habits of sharing that, while underlying any
healthy society, become increasingly necessary with the aging of its members.
It also locks up, for use by only a minority, many resources (access to nature
or open space or solitude, for example) that are of singular importance to the
emotional and physical health of the society as a whole.

The issue is not one of absolute
poverty but of relative deprivation. In an industrial, high-consumption society
with a markedly unequal distribution of wealth there is both more to feel deprived of, because of advertising and the example of
consumption set by the better-off, and more actually to be
deprived of, because of what the better-off are able to appropriate to their
own use. Such marked inequality also entails emotional costs: invidious
comparisons, discontent with what one has, and frustration over not being able
to do "better." Under such conditions, low income can all too readily lead to
low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy and failure-conditions little
associated with being able to cope, or even with trying to.

Older age structures in low
mortality/low fertility populations are either already under way in many
countries or likely to be so within a generation or two. But a society's
conditions of life are unlikely to be much affected simply by the number of old
people or their share of the population. Old age will be a problem to the
extent that social and environmental conditions fail to meet the needs of all age groups (and of future generations no less than
present). The importance of social policy in this regard can hardly be
exaggerated. Meeting any society's needs entails giving some extra attention to
the special needs arising at particular stages of life, old age included. But
the threats to human wellbeing in these countries would appear, still, to
derive more from non-demographic than demographic phenomena; and, so far as
demographic phenomena are concerned, more from past increases in numbers and
marked fluctuations in annual birth rates than from either prospective
numerical declines or the trend to older age structures.

Lincoln H.
Day is
a retired senior fellow in the Department of Demography at the Australian
National University, coauthor (with Alice Taylor Day) of Too Many
Americans (1964), and author of The Future
of Low-Birthrate Populations (1992).

References and readings for each article
are available at www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/.